CONGRATS to Wayne! (A HistoryMaker, indeed!)

Black  Alumni  Network     
108 Terrell Rd            
P.O. Box 6693                       
Newport News, VA 23606

 June 28, 2010

For immediate release                                                

Contact: Dan Holly, 919-448-8221
vav@jerrythomaspr.com

30^th anniversary of alumni monthly committed to media diversity

In July, the Black Alumni Network, a society of Columbia University journalism alumni and friends, celebrates its 30^th anniversary. For three decades BA Network’s instrument has been its monthly newsletter. In July 1980, graduate Wayne Dawkins initiated publication with a two-page sheet that he mailed to 25 classmates. Over the years, the founders enlisted alumni from future classes and reached back to men and women in previous classes.

Today the newsletter is circulated monthly to 600 media leaders and also is posted online at journalism.columbia.edu for the 10,000 alumni plus friends of America’s premier graduate school of journalism. In addition, the newsletter has been the most consistent chronicler of the rise of black power within the mainstream media. Two authoritative books on the National Association of Black Journalists were informed by reporting from BA Network correspondents.

The newsletter’s rise has corresponded with the rise in power and influence of members within the network. Among the BA Network’s galaxy of stars are James McBride, ’80, [author of “The Color of Water” and “Miracle at St. Anna”]; Jill Nelson, ’80, [author, “Volunteer Slavery” and “Sexual Healing”]; Mira Thomas Lowe, ’88, [editor of Jet, and first woman to lead that magazine]; sports journalists and classmates George Smith, ’88, and Rob Parker, ’88, of ESPN, Suzanne Malveaux, ’91, CNN White House correspondent, and A’Lelia Bundles, ’76, biographer of Madam C.J. Walker, her great-great grandmother. Bundles is a Columbia University trustee.

BA Network’s three-decade mission has been expanding racial diversity of the media. Its founders took note of the existing “old boy network” of the late 1970s. Rather than complain or sulk, they created an independent instrument in order to build a comparable pool of media talent.

The BA Network’s relentless work has earned the respect and cooperation of university administration and media industry leaders. 

A network project is fund raising in order to permanently endow the Black Alumni Network/Phyllis T. Garland scholarship. Since 2006, five scholars have received $5,000 each in order to complete their studies at Columbia J-school.

Editors of the BA Network are available to discuss the state and future of journalism and mass media.